In the modern societies, various kinds of industrial products have continuously been produced in large amounts and then supplied to markets, in order to respond to the demands of the wide societies. In addition, on the production of the industrial products, a large quantity of energy has been consumed to process raw materials into various forms. However, after the products thus supplied to the markets have been used, the used products have partially been supplied to recycling processes, but most of the products have been supplied to incineration treatments or landfill treatments as wastes. Simultaneously, next new products have continuously been produced from new raw material resources and then supplied to markets.
Now, so long as the used products are not recycled, it is necessary to supply wastes comprising the increasing used products to incineration treatments or landfill treatments for dealing the wastes. Therefore, in order to reduce household garbage discarded as used product wastes, the charging of fees for the garbage has been examined and partially performed.
However, even the movements could also not have responded to the treatments of the increasing wastes in the current states, and the fact is that the above-described incineration treatments, the landfill treatments or the like have therefore unwillingly been carried out. Hence, various problems deviated from the states have been closed up, and serious problems against living environments and global environments have been caused, such as the insufficient incineration capacities of incineration plants, the shortage of landfill sites, global warming due to the production of carbon dioxide on incineration treatments, the production of harmful substances harming the health of people, the leakage of harmful substance-containing water from landfill sites, and the production of stinks.
In addition, industrial products have generally been supplied to markets through many processes, such as the mining of limited fossil fuel resources, for example, oil and coal, separation and purification processes, intermediate raw material production, final product production, and transportation. Hence, the process has accompanied the consumption of a large quantity of energy, and the total energy consumption per unit product has been expanded together with increasing in the consumption of the products. The problem in the large wasteful consumption of energy has also been closed up as a global environmental problem.
Therefore, as measures for fundamentally improving such the problem, it has socially strongly been demanded to realize a recycling-oriented society in which consumed products are reprocessed without being subjected to an incineration treatment or a landfill treatment and then reused as the recycled products. However, the realization of the recycling-oriented society in which the used products are recycled is not easy, and it is necessary for realizing the recycling-oriented society to solve various problems.
For example, in recent years, various kinds of dyes or coloring matters have been used in the products in response to commodity developments for responding to various social demands, and many chemical substances have been used for giving various functions such as an insecticidal property, a flame-protecting property, and a weather-proofing property. Large amounts of the chemical substances have been used as coating, adhesives, soil-treating agents, building materials such as plywood, woods, clothes, or floorings, and the like, and these chemical substances have nowadays been doubted to be causative agents causing indoor air pollution, sick house syndromes, chemical substance hyperesthesia, and the like. Thereby, measures such as the unemployment of these chemical substances, the removal of these chemical substances at recycling treatment stages, even when used, and the detoxication of these chemical substances have been required.
Further, industrial products have generally been made by assembling parts comprising different raw materials, respectively. For example, a suit as clothing is made up from not only a face side fabric of the suit, but also part raw materials such as a lining fabric, a collar interlining, buttons, a zipper, and sewing threads. The raw materials of these parts are generally different from each other. Thereby, in order to supply the product to recycling processes, it is, for example, necessary to divide the waste into the parts for the recycling. Since the highly complicated troublesome steps must thus be carried out, there is also a problem that the performance of the recycling is difficult. Further, there is a problem wherein the qualities of raw materials of recyclable commodities supplied to the recycling are gradually deteriorated during the recycling treatments and are inferior to the qualities of the raw materials from the first starting product, and there is also a problem that the ranges and amounts of materials capable of being supplied to the recycling must be limited.
Under such the circumstance as described above, in recent years the classified collection and recommercialization of used polyethylene terephthalate bottles (hereinafter, occasionally referred to PET bottles) have been obligated with a law. Measures that the used PET bottles are integrally collected by both administrative bodies and private bodies and then supplied to recycling treatments have been started. For examples, in JP-A 11-302443 (hereinafter, JP-A means “Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication”), a method for recycling the used PET bottle raw material to produce the highly pure polyester has been produced. However, this technique still has a problem on a point that the used raw material comprising the PET bottles and capable of being used by this method are limited to used PET bottles from which different kinds of polymers or foreign matters have sufficiently been removed.
Further, in relation to this, in JP-A 2002-60542 has been proposed a recycling method for producing dimethyl terephthalate useful as an intermediate raw material from used polyester products processed into cushion materials, floor materials, films, resin products, fiber products such as futons or uniform wears, or the like, although one or more additional installations for removing components except the polyester are necessary.
According to these conventional techniques, the used raw materials can surely partially be recycled as raw materials for producing new products without subjecting the used raw materials to an incineration treatment or a landfill treatment. Namely, these techniques try to recycle the used PET bottle raw materials, but for recycling the used raw materials into raw materials for producing new products, it is premised to collect the used raw materials. However, any method has not been proposed on a method for collecting the used raw materials in these conventional techniques.
Therefore, conventional techniques on methods for collecting the used raw materials will hereinafter be examined. For example, in JP-A 11-157523 has been proposed a method for printing advertisement on the surfaces of PET bottles and scrapping up various costs related to the collection of the PET bottles from the advertising rate income obtained from the printed advertisements. Namely, this conventional method is a method for scrapping up various costs related to the collection of the PET bottles, such as various costs for community meetings, shops, and collection traders, costs necessary for a system-managing organizer, and subscription to municipalities, and thereby for effectively collecting the PET bottles. However, this conventional method is effective with respect to a point for collecting the used products, but has not proposed any method related to a point for treating the collected used PET bottles.